Today led my partner Doug and I to 3-Mile lake in Southwestern Iowa. This was a the 4th tournament in the year-long series that we are competing in. We stood in 3rd place before the tournament, which was in our goal range of placing in the top 3 once the season was finished.
Last weekend we spent about 7 hours on the lake looking for any sign of bass that were concentrated, or at least using specific areas of the lake. To put is nicely, we struggled, we only found three keeper bass, and only caught a few other short bass. Leaving the lake I was defeated...until I got a call from a friend of mine that was fishing a tournament on 3-Mile that same day. It was a struggle for almost everyone. This made me feel a little better coming into today's event.
We were up at 2:30am to make the 2-hour drive to the lake, as we drove we figured out a plan to attack the lake. We also knew that rain was in the forecast all day long in the area, which normally helps the anglers catch more fish. Notice I said "normally"!!!
Our plan was a good one, the first stop we made, a shallow feeding flat and BOOM, Doug scores our first keeper bass. We continue in this area, and BOOM, I hook up with our second keeper bass on a buzzbait. Things are looking good!
We continue to fish around the same feeding flat, and finally give up. We decide to head for a little deeper location, not too far away. Zero...then we go a little bit deeper along a channel swing...Zero...we continue to hit some standing timber...Zero.
It was time to refocus...and refocus we did. We went to other areas in the lake that were similar to where we got a few bites early in the morning. This was our saving grace for the day. We hooked up on two more keepers on the day, and weighed in 3 keeper bass that were almost seven pounds.
Fishing was tough, and I had mixed feelings as we put the boat back on the trailer. I figured we had bombed and given up a lot of points towards our goal of the top three in the "Team of the Year" race. Come to find out, many teams struggled, and we ended up in 6th place. Not as bad as I had thought, and it might be just enough to save our season, it probably came down to one little decision that we made on the water today. Belva Deer is the next stop in a few weeks to decide it all!
